Mr Brown rolled up last evening and dropped off my xmas present to myself. First impression was most positive.....focus was precise, the VR was absolutely incredible as Nikon appears to be breaking new ground, handling as well as any, certainly not as cumbersome as the 2.8 model, it renders exceptionally well and is sharp from corner to corner. I am satisfied to say the least.

BTW, I got the D5200 earlier this week and even with the very high resolution 24MP DX sensor the lens performs very well. The new VR is supporting the high spatial resolution (for hand held images). I truly like the lens - it's great.

Just to add my $.02. I shot with it over the past three days while touring around on my splitboard for a couple assignments. Overall, this lens gave a great first impression. AF was fast and accurate, images are sharp across the frame when stopped down to f5.6 and still very good at f4. It was great coupled with the D600 for a lighter setup when weight is important but you can't sacrifice image quality. After three days of use in the mountains I'm very happy with the purchase and excited to have a lighter combo for days when I am going a little deeper into the backcountry.

I just shot some long range shots with the 70-200/4AFS and TC20EIII on my D800 and I have to say I'm fairly impressed. VR worked extremely well and at f/11 the centrol 90% of the frame is pretty darned good with everything looking sharp except at 100% where you can see some lack of crispness. A little bit of sharpening works wonders though.

Is it pixel-level sharp, no, but it's really very very good. It can be tough to tell how sharp things are due to looking through a couple miles of sea level air, but based on my experience it's more than acceptable.

Threads like this make this forum the very best at what it does and is. HUGE thanks to Andy for his time and effort placed in this. And real appreciation for his city and all that it offered up. Makes me jealous to see such wonderful places.

I've been on HAM radio forums, electronic design discussion forums, LAW forums, Car forums.. Nothing comes close to the caliber of helping people here, the quality of information in these thousands of threads, or, the absolute talent that these contain.

Thanks for all of this Andy. And thanks to all of the people that freely contribute to this wealth we call FM Forums..